Working Stiff

"How did you get hurt?" Xi Chunzhi crushed the can in her hand.

Tu Ran caught a faint note of anger in her voice—she probably wanted to avenge her.

"I don't know," Tu Ran said softly.

Xi Chunzhi looked at her with the exasperation of someone whose hopes had been dashed.

Struggling to compose herself, she fixed her gaze on Tu Ran. "No one else can know about your memory loss."

Tu Ran nodded obediently.

Seeing how meek she was now, Xi Chunzhi stressed again, "Don't trust anyone but me."

Tu Ran nodded again.

"Do you still remember how to use weapons, how to eliminate aberrations, and how to avoid their attacks?"

Tu Ran blinked, then shook her head.

Xi Chunzhi flopped onto the sofa and ran her fingers through her hair. "Your situation isn't looking too good."

The worry etched across Xi Chunzhi's face made Tu Ran realize things were more complicated than she'd thought.

She ventured, "Can't I just quit?"

Her job was as a Pioneer, which was why she had to enter the Threshold and face all kinds of formidable aberrations. If she quit, wouldn't she be free from all of that?

She could live an ordinary life, as long as she kept her life.

But Xi Chunzhi immediately doused her hopes with cold water.

"You seem to have forgotten that pretty conveniently." Xi Chunzhi sneered. "If we could quit, you and I would have done it long ago. There's no way we'd still be dealing with aberrations day in and day out, risking our lives as monster chow."

"Why? Did we sign some kind of contract?" Tu Ran guessed.

Xi Chunzhi raised an eyebrow. "Good thing you only lost your memory and didn't crack your skull."

Tu Ran was left speechless by her remark, unsure how to respond.

Xi Chunzhi leaned back against the leather sofa, crossing her legs. "Before we became Pioneers, we all signed a fifteen-year agreement with the Federal Government. The first five years are spent in specialized training under federal departments; the remaining ten are spent serving as Pioneers, gathering all kinds of intel on the Threshold for the Federal Government."

"We're the first batch of Pioneers to sign this agreement. We finished our five-year training last year, and this is our first year of field work. The Federal Government poured a ton of resources into us. If you try to walk away now, they'll hunt you to the ends of the earth."

"So when's the next time we go into the Threshold?" Tu Ran asked, hoping to pick up some survival skills in the meantime.

"No idea," Xi Chunzhi shrugged.

"?"

Tu Ran couldn't believe it. "How could you not know?"

Every job has set hours.

Xi Chunzhi sighed. "The Threshold doesn't open and close on a fixed schedule. It might not open for a whole year, or it could open any minute now. Most of the time, it opens once every half month, so there's no exact time."

It was that random? Tu Ran was dumbfounded.

"Then can you stay home from now until the next time it opens?" Tu Ran asked humbly.

If she had Xi Chunzhi's help, she'd definitely get twice the results with half the effort.

Xi Chunzhi shook her head again.

"No. Not only can I not stay home, but you can't either."

"?"

"Why?"

"We're also responsible for part of the security detail. While the Threshold is closed, we have to carry out daily patrols," Xi Chunzhi said calmly. "The Federal Government spent a fortune training us, so they won't waste a single bit of our value."

Wasn't that just capitalism?

Wretched capitalism!

No matter which world you were in, capitalists were always the ones who squeezed their workers the hardest.